Page 89 of Just One More Thing

“It’s okay.” He moves to the refrigerator, the old one, the one that looks like it belongs in a different decade, and pulls the door open. “Whatcha want to drink? Beer, wine, sweet tea, water.”

“I’ve got water,” I say, lifting my bkr. “But I’d love a beer.”

He pulls one out as he gestures toward my bkr. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that.”

“Never seen an emotional support water bottle?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“It travels everywhere. Judges silently. Encourages hydration. Here.” I hold it out. He takes it and peers inside with one eye like he’s expecting something to peer back. “It’s not going to bite you.”

“Just checking.” He takes a sip. Pauses. “It’s like drinking from a beer bottle.”

I stare at him and blink. How have I never realized that?

He takes another sip, and that’s when I notice the stack of Southern Living magazines behind him.

I walk over and pick up the top issue. Then another and another. Issue after issue. Every single one with my recipes. “You really bought them all,” I say, holding the October issue from two years ago with my pumpkin slab pie on the cover.

He leans against the counter, watching me keep flipping. He even has the first one I was published in. “I confessed about the magazines,” he says. “Anything you want to confess?”

I make the mistake of looking at him.

He waits.

“Well. Somehow you already know my choice of sleepwear.”

He keeps waiting.

I pick at the corner of the magazine and say it before I can talk myself out of it. “IworethejerseywhenIwenttoyourgames,” I say fast enough to blur into one word. Just in case velocity counts as plausible deniability.

It does not.

“Mo.” His voice drops. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There are a lot of things I don’t know why I didn’t say.” I look down at the magazine in my hands, at my own name printed there like proof I figured out at least one version of a life. “And one I don’t know why I did.”

He doesn’t press. He just starts rummaging through a drawer. “What are you looking for?”

“Bottle opener.”

I point. “The one hanging on the fridge.”

He turns around, grunts, grabs it, pops both bottles, then hangs it back in the exact spot he couldn’t find it.

We clink our bottles in a silent toast. “Wanna sit?” he asks.

The sectional swallows me whole when I drop onto it. It’s obscenely comfortable. “I didn’t think it was possible,” I say. “But this thing has gotten even better.”

“I probably sleep here more than my actual bed.”

Hank waddles in from somewhere, heaves himself onto the ottoman, and collapses with his chin landing squarely on Jake’s foot.

We sit looking at the water. The tide is moving and the moon is full, making the bay glow in a way that looks more like a painting than reality. In the distance, the outline of a cruise ship drifts past, lit up like a floating city.

We talk about small things first. Cruise ships and buffets and Hank’s current obsession with flexi Nylabones and blue bandanas. It’s easy in the way this has always been easy when we let it be.

“So,” I say. “Morse code.”